Summerlin development as seen from the top of the parking garage of Red Rock Resort. The 23,000-acre, master-planned Summerlin community was designed to provide open space and pedestrian paths, two hallmarks of "smart growth." Photo by Clint Karlsen.

Imagine an idyllic place in America where neighbors talk to neighbors during leisurely walks down tree-lined streets and mom-and-pop shops flourish on every corner, where bike paths and hiking trails take the place of six-lane boulevards.

That's not a typical scene in Las Vegas, a sprawling metropolis with a reputation for reclusive residents who enter their suburban homes directly from the garage without so much as a friendly wave to their neighbor.

Smart-growth advocates from East Coast think tanks such as the Urban Land Institute want to see big cities return to a small-town atmosphere. They're tugging at the emotions of Las Vegas residents who have witnessed the sea of tile rooftops encroach upon Red Rock National Conservation Area, who are stuck in 45-minute freeway commutes from horse properties in the once-rural northwest valley to downtown and the Strip.

City planners appreciate the efforts of environmental activist groups to curb suburban sprawl through "smart growth" development. But what exactly is smart growth, who's behind it and how does it affect local property owners?

"There are trade-offs that people don't like to talk about," said James Dellinger, executive director of GreenWatch and EducationWatch at the Washington, D.C.-based Capital Research Center, a group studying nonprofit organizations. "It often heats up the most during times of prosperity. When times are rough, this issue doesn't come up as much. Whenever you have explosive growth, you have this debate."

Smart-growth activists say suburban are as are being developed too quickly, without preserving ample open space. By restricting housing development, shopping malls and highways, opponents of sprawl say cities can grow in a "smart" way.

But Dellinger said these proposals limit consumer choices and trample on property rights.

Smart-growth legislation also discriminates against new and less affluent homeowners who are priced out of the housing market when land-use restrictions cause property values to skyrocket, Dellinger wrote in a report for Capital Research Center co-authored by Ryan Balis, policy analyst at the National Center for Public Policy Research.

"The concept of incumbent players, people who are already established versus people who are aspirants and recent college grads, all of a sudden someone wants to draw the line differently on what it takes to become a homeowner," Dellinger said from his Washington office.

Homeowners with property values in mind have supported many of the smart-growth policies by ideologically committed environmental groups, he said. Like most activists on the left, these groups are often masked as local government watchdogs, easily identifiable by catchy acronyms.

CRC researchers found that smart-growth proponents include Hollywood activists and liberal organizations. Environmental groups such as Sierra Club, Surface Transportation Policy Project, Natural Resources Defense Council and the National Trust for Historic Preservation are among smart growth's champions.

John Ritter, chief executive officer of Focus Property Group, a Las Vegas land developer, said smart growth is "obviously a pretty broad term." Some of the most important smart-growth issues facing Las Vegas now are water conservation and housing affordability, he said.

"Inspirada is a good example of smart growth," Ritter said of the 2,000-acre community being developed by Focus in west Henderson. "It's the new urbanist plan. What it is essentially is a way to develop at higher density, but still provide a really good quality of life for the residents. In addition to a more efficient way to develop, it does address that affordability issue."

Ritter, a member of the Southern Nevada chapter of Urban Land Institute, is a self-professed "ex-hippie" who feels strongly about preserving the environment. Part of smart growth is becoming more environmentally sensitive and using land more efficiently, he said.

"In other words, counter urban sprawl by increasing density," Ritter said. "If you're developing suburbia and spreading homes over larger areas, it's not a very efficient or smart way to live because all the services are less efficient. Fire and police protection is less efficient. It creates more traffic."

Ritter said the Las Vegas Valley Water District has done a good job of educating the public about water efficiency, helping to decrease per-capita consumption since 2003.

"Another leg of the stool we need to address is traffic. We are going to have to at some time bite the bullet and come up some kind of mass transit," he said. "It has to get people from the suburbs to downtown and the Strip without using their cars and it has to be something people will use."

Denver recently opened the $1.7 billion Transportation Expansion Project, or T-Rex, the largest light rail and highway project of its kind in the country. Like many metro areas across the country, Denver was looking for new ways to handle 21st-century housing and transportation issues such as sprawl, gridlock and pollution, Erin Bodine of Development Counsellors International said.

Oregon and Maryland are "poster children" for the smart-growth movement, CRC's Dellinger said.

Oregon is testament to the movement's power, he said. A farmer must get special approval to build a new home on his own land. He can live there only if he owns at least 160 acres and can show that his land generated at least $40,000 in agricultural revenue in two out of the last three years.

In 1991, Portland, Ore., was the 55th most affordable city in the United States. By 2002, after smart-growth policies were implemented, Portland plunged to 163rd, according to the National Association of Home Builders.

Smart-growth planning in the booming suburbs of Arlington County, Va., across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., has created a housing affordability crisis, Dellinger said.

The average cost of a condominium increased from $151,857 in 2000 to $382,172 in 2006, according to the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors. Single-family home prices more than doubled over the same period to an average of $746,000.

Las Vegas has experienced a similar run-up in median home prices, largely due to escalating land values in the valley. New home prices jumped from $161,893 in 2000 to $326,500 in October, Home Builders Research reports.

Debra March, executive director of Lied Institute for Real Estate Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said several factors have contributed to a housing affordability problem in Las Vegas, including low interest rates and a declining stock market that drove investors into real estate over the last few years.

She said smart growth is about preserving open space, but it's also about enhancing quality of life.

"Smart growth is community-centered development, where transit and pedestrian orientation are important considerations in design," she said. "It possesses a balanced mix of housing types to meet the needs of residents and the work force, while offering commercial and retail opportunities that provide employment and services to support the community. Parks and open space are an equally important consideration and support the health and vitality of the community."

The growing concern that current development patterns no longer meet the long-term interests of residents has led to more communities adopting smart or "sustainable" development measures, March said. People question the economic, social and environmental implications of growth, including the costs of abandoning urban infrastructure to grow farther out from the developed city centers.

March, a member of the Henderson Planning Commission and American Planning Association board of directors, said examples of smart growth in Las Vegas might include redevelopment efforts in downtown Las Vegas and Henderson or the dense Project CityCenter on the Strip, assuming it provides affordable housing in support of its work force.

The 23,000-acre, master-planned Summerlin community, developed by Howard Hughes Corp., stretches to the Las Vegas Valley's western rim and is home to 93,000 residents. It's heralded as smart urban planning and was the top-selling community in America for about 10 years.

"What we've been developing in the first decade and a half has largely been suburban-type development," Hughes spokesman Tom Warden said. "We're now moving to new modern urbanism. Smart growth is about creating job opportunity where people live and set that within a pedestrian-friendly, energetic environment."

Hughes plans to develop an "urban village" on 400 acres bounded by Charleston Boulevard to the north, Sahara Avenue to the south, Town Center Drive to the east and Las Vegas Beltway to the west, basically all of the open area around Red Rock Resort.

The "urban village" will have 7,000 residential units, more than 1 million square feet of premium office space and a 1.5 million-square-foot regional shopping center to be built by Hughes' parent company, General Growth Properties. Construction is scheduled to begin early next year.

"Mixed-use development is a term we've used liberally in the valley for a number of years," Warden said. "I've seen it applied to plots of five acres. You're not going to have job opportunity and neighborhood services at that level. So there's a level of magnitude. It has to be big enough to be a live-work environment."

Environmental groups are often the most financially prepared to fight for smart growth, CRC reported. The 750,000-member Sierra Club, with headquarters in San Francisco, claims that "sprawl-like development can use many more resources -- five times more pipe and wire, five times as much heating and cooling energy -- than urban living."

In Las Vegas, the club filed numerous unsuccessful lawsuits to prevent the expansion of U.S. Highway 95.

Less known, the Surface Transportation Policy Project is one of the best-funded and most vocal advocates of subsidies of mass transit, which has become the politically correct panacea for issues of growth management, Dellinger said. In 2004, the group had revenue close to $1.5 million and expenses of $2.2 million, according to its IRS Form 990.

The Trust for Public Lands has helped states and local governments draft and pass more than 300 ballot measures that have generated $19 billion in new land acquisition funding. A government agency or organization must be willing to take ownership of the land.

Foundation grants against sprawl go to umbrella coalition groups such as Smart Growth Network and Smart Growth America, Dellinger said. These groups oppose low-density living and promote new transportation choices and transit-oriented development. According to its 2004 tax return, Smart Growth America had $2.39 million in revenue and $1.25 million in expenses.

Despite the creative advertising of the anti-sprawl crusade, living apart from city life is still attractive and in many cases necessary for Americans, Dellinger said. Roughly one-fourth of Americans live in high-density developments; the other three-fourths live in either low-density suburban neighborhoods or in even less sparsely populated rural areas.

"Americans have voted with their feet," Dellinger said. "They like having more space, less pollution and less crime. Moreover, they have decided that the flight to the suburbs is a way to achieve a cherished American goal of home ownership, often a measure of economic success and what most of us think of as 'making it.' They have little patience for state, federal or local government planners telling them how to live. But smart-growth backers are quite comfortable telling people how to live."